Share this:

Holder: Should not be leading national-security apparatus. Photo: Getty Images

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly noted last week that the investigation of the Times Square bombing attempt was in some ways similar to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. He was talking about the police work that nabbed Faisal Shahzad — but the comment also highlighted the similarity of our government’s response then and now.

Then came Attorney General Eric Holder’s weekend comments about seeking a broader “public safety” exception to the Miranda rule. That agenda shows that he’s still too focused on gathering evidence for a court case, when the top priority in such instances should be gathering intelligence to prevent future attacks — something that Miranda in no way prevents.

That drove the point home: Somehow, we’re back to a 1993 mindset on terrorism. Holder actually boasts that law enforcement is “the backbone of our national-security efforts.” Sorry — that’s not a good thing.

Yes, the prosecution did an effective job in 1993 of taking some terrorists off the street — but it didn’t help gather useful intelligence to stop future attacks. We know today that one 1993 terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, is the nephew of the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

We’ve had 17 years to learn the lessons of 1993, but instead we’re back where we started. The government’s goal should be prevention — to stop terrorists before they drive into Times Square, not after the fuse is lit, the bomb detonated and people killed.

Our federal investigators did a commendable job in the Times Square aftermath, but we shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves when we came so close to losing innocent Americans.

The Justice Department is leading this investigation as well as other recent terrorism investigations. It also led the review determining whether detainees held at Guantanamo Bay should be released and the review of what interrogation and transfer policies should be used with suspected terrorists.

The attorney general shouldn’t be leading this country’s national-security apparatus — Congress created that role for the director of national intelligence. Where was the DNI at the press conference after the Times Square incident? Is counterterrorism now the primary job of law enforcement?

Even failed terror attacks represent a failure of intelligence. And we’ll continue to have intelligence failures because the government isn’t using every intelligence-collection tool at its disposal.

For example, we’re too focused on law enforcement and not enough on intelligence-gathering in interviews with terrorists. Justice has stated that it initially questioned Shahzad under the public-safety exception to Miranda, then later Mirandized him.

But that exception merely determines the admissibility of a defendant’s statements in court. There is nothing to prevent more interrogations of Shahzad with no Miranda restrictions at all — it’s just that statements from such an interview couldn’t be used against the defendant at trial. This emphasis on the admissibility of evidence highlights the fact that Justice is still prioritizing prosecution of a single defendant over larger national-security concerns.

These skewed priorities are spreading — witness the administration initiative in which the FBI is reading Miranda rights to terrorist detainees taken from the battlefield.

And there’s a price to pay: While our government is choosing not to use every possible tool at its disposal, we’re seeing an unprecedented number of attempted and successful attacks on US soil, including Fort Hood and the New York subway plot, as well as the Christmas and Times Square bomb attempts.

We’ve lost many young soldiers, sailors and Marines in efforts to keep terrorists from reaching our shores — yet when the enemy does penetrate our borders, we treat him like a common criminal rather than an enemy combatant.

This juxtaposition doesn’t make sense when our most important goal is protecting the homeland and American civilians from attack. Our enemies are determined to move this war to our own front yard. We can’t keep refusing to fight it with every possible weapon in our arsenal.

The Justice Department’s Web site touts “the criminal-justice system as a counterterrorism tool.” Let’s make sure that lawyers don’t become our only counterterrorism tool. We can’t afford a retreat to 1993, when we were still ignorant of the true threat.

Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.) is the top Re publican on the House Intelligence Com mittee’s Terrorism Subcommittee and a former FBI special agent.